Mobius Band: Ten Songs or Albums From a 15-Seat Van

Early this summer we did our first national tour. We'd been around the northeast, some of the south, looped up to Chicago a few times...all the typical things that bands in our position do. But this time we finally went all the way to the Pacific and back, riding pretty close to borders and oceans the whole way. We did this in three weeks, which, if you are at all familiar with how large this country is, means there was a lot of fucking driving. We became intimate with our 15-passenger white whale of a van and with it came the stereo and our three iPods (cute, I know), which cued up the tunes that sped our days.

10. Miracle Johan: "I'm Mark Blount"

Ben Sterling: I was raised a Knicks fan. And while my days of pouring over the NBA statistics on the way to school every Wednesday are over, I still have to hate on the Boston Celtics. That stance had to be rethought when our friend John from the now-defunct Bears reinvented himself as Miracle Johan and made a whole record of hilarious basement electro songs sung by each member of the current team.

Mark Blount (aka Johan) spends most of his track asking for some gum ("my mouth is dry") and reminding us he's funky and still worth a shit now that he's coming off the bench. Kind of like Mike Skinner if he recorded on a 4-track, was from Stoughton, Mass., and slowed his voice down.

9. Magnetic Fields: "I Don't Believe You"

Peter Sax: On this tour we did a fair amount of interviews and, like many bands, had no idea how to answer the old, "Who are your influences?" question. But when this song came on outside Seattle, I realized what a direct influence Stephen Merritt has been on my songwriting.

Merritt always starts out with a really simple song that could be knocked out on an acoustic, but dresses it up with just the right texture and instrumentation. His lyrics are often funny and light on the surface, but he doesn't try to bury the darker emotions running beneath. This particular song is a great example of one of my favorite genres of songwriting-- I don't know what you call it, but it's the opposite of an Ode.

8. Gillian Welch: "Time the Revelator"

Noam Schatz: A bittersweet rumination on the romance of the road, this album came on as the dusk folded into night on the longest drive day of the tour. Simple and down to Earth, Gillian Welch's songs manage to be simultaneously traditional and modern. Anyone pondering what a band's to do in the state of modern music pirating should put "Everything Is Free" on permanent rotation. The album ends with the amazing "I Dream A Highway". the slowest, loneliest 15 minutes ever recorded.

7. Matthew Dear: "Elementary Lovers"

Ben: One benefit of being on Ghostly is...great company. Matt is one of our favorites and is actually solely responsible for getting the other 2/3rds of the band into minimal techno in the first place. So we were thrilled he asked us to play on a track for his new album, and listened to this one a bunch in the van. Between shows in Chicago and Detroit we met up at a suburban studio and did our best impersonation of the Talking Heads impersonating African music (his direction). Matt is a true artist with a lot up his sleeve. If you are expecting his next album to be Leave Luck to Heaven, Pt. 2 you'll probably be surprised.

6. Wire: "Send"

Peter: After six straight hours of driving through the most persistent rain and lightning storms I have ever seen, I was ready to pull over and sob. I needed something to get me going. Something to wind me up and inspire me to kick this drive's ass-- to pound it into submission.

This record is industrial mayhem with an apocalyptic lyrical tone, and it has that crispy sound like it's stuffed into a metal box and is trying to bash its way out. There are just enough songs that dip below 200bpm to hold interest and to make the burners really fuck you up. The rest is faster-than-human robot death rock, groaning about comets hitting the earth and god knows what else.

5. Various Artists: Stock: a Static Discos Compilation

Peter: The great show promoter in Missoula hit us off with this chillin' late night at his house and we were hooked. It's minimal techno from Mexico packed with dubby, soft clicks and pops that groove as hard as Africa 70. Maybe I'm naive, but while I always knew there had to be more to the Mexican scene than Banda (sorry, not really a fan), this is all I know of it to date. It's enough to have me polishing my Spanish and applying for a work visa.

4. Soltero: "Acadian Coast"

Ben: Nobody does heartbreak like Tim Howard, and on this tour I could use a little company. Wry as fuck, sad as fuck, and seemingly incapable of writing anything but beautiful, simple melodies-- classic breakup material just oozes out of his Sauconys. As if that weren't enough, his band name means "bachelor" in Spanish. He was born into this. Full disclosure: Tim is an old friend, but songs this good are worth a lil' conflict of interest.

3. Beach Boys: Pet Sounds

Noam: Everyone has to talk about Brian Wilson, right? Well no matter how over-exposed the Beach Boys are in the pantheon of Influential-Drugged Out-Friends with Charlie Manson-Teen Stars turned Psychos, it is for good reason. This album sounds like nothing else ever recorded. The emotions are so immediate, the songs are always surprising, and the arrangements defy gravity. This album sounds the best when flying through the California hills in a "borrowed" $100K BMW convertible. Yeah, that's how we roll.

2. Lucinda Williams: "2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten"

Peter: This came on in Alabama. Her music is such a product of its environment that it really couldn't have been more perfect. Lucinda is one of the best songwriters of our time, and I think this is one of her best. The first lines are "You can't depend on anything really/ There's no promises, there's no point/ There's no good, there's no bad."

But before you could wonder how such a simple sounding song could dare to be so brazenly high-concept, the line closes with "in this dirty little joint," bringing the scene back home, philosophically intact but tactile and visceral. A perfect, pillow-familiar country melody leads us from the existential to the biblical, all in the course of describing a bar in Mississippi.

Ben actually did a little research and it turns out this song is based on a Birney Imes photo: the title is on a sign in the background; the subject is a group of guys around a pool table in a Juke Joint in Mississippi. And my favorite lyric ever-- "Junebug versus hurricane, hey hey"-- is also a reference to booze. I think I had a Hurricane in New Orleans once; never had a Junebug but apparently they're real.

1. R. Kelly: "Trapped in the Closet, Chapters 1-5"

Ben: The thing about R. Kelly is that he's the kind of evil genius that follows up allegations that he urinates on 14 year-old girls with a song that asks you to "shower down on me/ wet me with your love." You have to ask yourself-- is it even possible to top that?

The obvious answer for us mortals is no. There is no way to top that. But R's answer is "Trapped in the Closet", a five-part serial sex & lies epic, set to the same weird beat and over-the-top crescendo looped over and over with R. just going off on top for 15 minutes. A few people we met up with on tour pulled that "but seriously, do you really like this?" routine when we'd cue this up. To which we just had to hold our tongues. Because if you don't get R. Kelly now, how can anyone possibly reach you?